The US is the inventor of the first transistor, computer chip, calculator, LISP, COBOL, C, networking of computing devices, UNIX, CCD's, etc. I am pretty sure that we can do well without hiring IT staff from India to weite code lines for our device drivers. What we need to do is so heavily tax those American corporations that hire Indian and other programmers that it becomes impossible for them to make a profit while at it. Only then will those greedy free marketeers create an environment where American kids will not have to compete for miserable wages with a foreign programmers whose choice is either to program at substandard pay here in the US, or return home to a place without food, AC, roads, sanitation, or health care. Let's not fool ourselves unnecessarily. There is simply no explanation as to why Americans cannot fulfill the jobs now given to foreign IT workers, no explanation other than the excessive greed of our own corporations and "job creators".

1:18 pm October 29, 2012

D N Prahlad wrote:

USA has traditionally welcomed immigrants and continues to do fine. Their might be some problems with their laws but they are nowhere near as hostile as Indian immigration laws.

Let me turn the argument around and argue that India needs immigrants. Indeed, the need of the hour in India is to have immigrants so that the labour lobby which has guaranteed inefficiency is completely broken. There are lots of software "engineers" who are incapable of engineering and we need a huge influx of teacher workers who are immigrants. Most "Engineers" do not understand seriousness of what they do and hence need an upgrade of "core" skills. This alas can not be taught by us locals. We need immigration to help us. This is just the industry I know and others can not be that different.

Thus, I worry more about our immigration policies than that of the USA. Could someone write a book about this please ?

1:40 pm October 29, 2012

SM wrote:

Jose, A very good idea indeed. PLEASSEEE do that and send our folks back home once they get their masters and PhDs from your best universities. I cant emphasize enough how much I want you to do this!!

2:25 pm October 29, 2012

Venkat (India) wrote:

I agree with Jose. Americans are definitely capable of doing the IT work and that it is only because of the greed of corporations that Americans are not getting the jobs. Now, if they were to make the jobs available only to Americans then other countries will sure reciprocate it. Effectively, we are saying: let's roll back globalization. 'Is it practically possible?' is the question. But, whatever the situation - globalization, no globalization - it is the top 1% that make rules and laws. So, they will ensure to make the laws and rules that benefit them or at least that does not affect them. You and me are non entities. And the thing that happens to us are incidental. If good - we are fortunate. If bad - unfortunate. That's all.

4:00 pm October 29, 2012

Aj wrote:

Ok Jose, everybody says their people are the best. If Indians are so bad at programming why are I.T service (don't get confused with BPO/call center) seekers are not shunning India & opt for some other cheap source?........ that's because those people incharge of the business are not arrogant & fools like you.

4:45 pm October 29, 2012

Hammer wrote:

No ! Please America send the Indians out of America so that they can come to India and make India more powerful !

4:50 pm October 29, 2012

SM wrote:

@D N Prahlad

I dont think engineers, scientists and other such highly educated people are lining up to get Indian visas. So to say that India's immigration and American immigration problems are exactly same, is living in the fools world. Most of the immigrants India receive is from its neighboring countries who are mostly low skill, which India has plenty even with the immigrants. India does have a hostile visa regime but what it needs desperately is a refugee plan and programme because that is the sort of immigrants India gets, fleeing from Burma, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Tibet. Therefore, there is a reason India is hostile to all immigrants. Obviously India could do a good job at selectively granting citizenship to deserving immigrants but then when has Indian bureaucracy done anything right and why would one hope it might get better in face of such poor governance?

4:54 pm October 29, 2012

SHRIKANT SHARMA newyork wrote:

the problem with Indian immigration is due to corruption.this corruption is so rampant and systematic that the black market prize if American visa is 20 lakhs(two millions) of rupees or more that is around40000 dollars.if American embassy in Bombay and newdelhi increases its visa-fee many fold but do the processing of visa-applications systematically,rationally,reasonably,lawfully then their economy will be improved and only genuine engineers and doctors,scientists and good success-full managers will come.at present the southindian cooks on the name of cooking industry-managers,Punjabi drivers, BLACK Money-launderers,agriculturists from India are flooding the applications.the visas are rejected d on the pretext of POTENTIAL IMMIGRANTS IF HE OR SHE IS NOT COMING THROUGH CORRUPT ROUTS.

9:59 pm October 29, 2012

Hammer wrote:

America is going to collapse pretty soon ? I don't think the Indians are aware that America is bankrupt ? Even Americans can't find work in America Lol !

1:00 am October 30, 2012

swetha wrote:

Why does India need immigrants..it is souring with population, adding more to it would be insane! Instead we should work on achieving higher literacy rate and focus on educating the poorest of the poor.This brings a lot of change!

3:15 am October 30, 2012

wise_guy wrote:

I understand that immigration is a concern area in US but speaking about Indians, only 1 out of 100 (wild estimate) would think of entreprenuership. The rest are here to do jobs, most of which are IT jobs. A lot of Indians get into low ranked schools just for the sake of landing and eventually settling in USA. After graduation, they are placed in contract IT positions by faking their resumes (done be a lot of small IT consulting companies set up by desis)

6:46 am October 30, 2012

BracketCreep wrote:

Q: Why the U.S. Needs Indian Immigrants?
A: American workers with idiotic needs such as "competitive salary" are simply too costly. Why should corporations pay for their lifestyle which includes such frivolities as "mortgage loans" and children? If we flood the market with low wage servants we can break the back of this monster. Let's push for a low wage USA! What could go wrong? Hooray for us!

11:52 am October 30, 2012

Hammer wrote:

America is bankrupt Lol !

3:30 pm October 30, 2012

Frank Cutler wrote:

The notion that foreign prospective entrepreneurs seeking permanent residency in the United States are facing difficulty in securing green cards is wholly untrue. In fact, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has an immigrant visa category specifically designed for prospective entrepreneurs, the EB-5 visa, which has minimal requirements, including as little as $500,000 investment in a U.S.-based enterprise. The EB-5 is not subject to the green card cap Mr. Wadhwa refers to above. The people having difficulty securing green cards to which he is referring are not prospective entrepreneurs building the next Google but average IT workers who are working in the United States, often for multinational companies, or foreign students who then seek employment in the United States upon graduation.

Mr. Wadhwa's favorite justification is that between 1995-2005, 25% of start-ups had AT LEAST ONE immigrant founder. So this dubious statistic justifies rewarding any Indian or other foreign student (over 100,000 Indian students in the U.S. currently) who attends university in the United States a green card because they may, just may be part of a start-up in the United States that may or may not hire American citizens? Or perhaps green cards for all of the hundreds of thousands of H-1B holders from India currently working in the United States? The vast majority of H-1Bs and foreign students will never start a company in the United States or India, for that matter. So why give them all permanent residency?

If the criterion for better immigration policy is to reward entrepreneurs with green cards, we need to focus on people who will actually build companies, not some blind policy of presuming anyone from India or China with a professional degree will start a company. We have an immigrant visa category for that. These foreign students and H-1Bs already in the United States don't qualify for the entrepreneur visa because they are not entrepreneurs.

An October 2012 U.S. National Science Foundation study found that only 5.2% of Indian PhD students studying in the United States return to India upon graduation; these are the highly skilled potential entrepreneurs and patent developers we need to keep in the United States. Mr. Wadhwa's argument is a blatant attempt to open permanent residency to anyone with a professional degree under the guise of job creation and economic growth, and is disturbingly pointed at favoring one country (his former) over any other. There are skilled workers, and then there are skilled entrepreneurs. Let's not confuse the two.

4:00 pm October 30, 2012

Hammer wrote:

America is bankrupt ?

6:46 pm October 30, 2012

Hammer wrote:

Not even Americans can find work in the Us ?

10:51 pm October 30, 2012

jj wrote:

Here are six rigorous studies that show there is no shortage of STEM workers in the United States nor the likelihood of such a shortage in years to come.

I am a skilled worker doesn't mean that I shouldn't be a skilled entrepreneur. I play a role depends on the situation in the context of my visa status. If I have a green card definitely I float a company.

It all depends we shouldn't generalize.

6:54 pm November 6, 2012

NY dude wrote:

Jose - Time to mow the lawn and then clean the driveway... chop chop

7:18 pm November 6, 2012

Howard wrote:

The reason that the United States can have real unemployment of over 15% AND a virtually open door immigration policy bringing in hordes of skilled and unskilled new labor into the country is that we have no real leaders. What we have in both major parties, left, right, far left, far right, are self-serving whores of Big Business, Big Manufacturing, and Wall Street. Our politicians and lawmakers 'serve the public' for X number of years and then retire from service far, far richer than they were when they entered public service.
Perhaps some day the American voters will wake up to what's going on and we will shut our doors tight for two or three generations, until all Americans who want jobs have them and don't have to compete (and lose) with immigrants who will work cheaper, not look for benefits, and have no feelings or connections to our country other than to see us as a giant ATM machine.
When Americans do wake up, it won't be pretty.

1:36 am November 14, 2012

only_smart_guy_here wrote:

Dear Americans

Think. It helps sometimes. The world has changed. Something called globalization. I could go on about it, but the basic point is this - for a long while, the western world profited on it's ability to manufacture and develop goods that the entire world would pay high prices for, since the rest of the world did not have the expertise to develop it themselves.

But it's different now. If you can, sitting in your couch, write a 100 lines of code to make a fancy website, so can that guy on the other side of the world. It's become much easier for people in developing countries today to perform the same jobs as Americans. That's why corporations are moving to places where the same job can be done at a cheaper rate., like India or China. It'll keep happening until the world is at an equilibrium, where the Indians and Chinese demand the same lifestyle as the Americans. Until then, jobs are moving out.

For those who suggest closing down the borders, to create good ol' american jobs - Sure, go ahead. Pretty soon you'll find yourselves not very different from Somalia. Because you need to buy that car from Germany, or that tee from Honduras, or that TV from Japan, or that oil from Saudi Arabia. But what will you sell in return? Every study shows it's the immigrants who're creating revenue for Americans. And that makes sense, because that's why they're being allowed. If you lose them, they'll stay in their own country, which may not be the best option for them right now, but definitely great for their home country.

In India, the government is very worried about 'brain drain'. There are clauses that prevent skilled Indians from immigrating easily (212(e) rule). If anyone should be worried, it's them. Not Americans.

Regards
Smart Guy

6:08 pm November 16, 2012

Historypoint wrote:

The USA is a land of immigrants. The USA prospered due to immigration all throughout history. Now the settlers are no longer ready to work themselves, just enjoy the bounty..Ah..that is not going to happen! Karma will eventually reward the hardworking, constructive and creative chinese (not even the Indians).

12:09 pm November 20, 2012

City On A Shining Hill wrote:

The reality is America has always welcomed immigrants, and there is a special statue erected in New York Harbor that holds a special plate in the right hand, with those immortal words regarding the poor and disinfranchised of the world having a nation that welcomes then, and gives opportunites and freedoms not found in their home nations. We now have immigrants from all nations coming here, the rich, the poor, the well educated and the day laborer. When once our nation was comprised of mainly European Caucasians, fleeing religous persecution and poverty we now have races that represent the major countries, and the amazing thing is that we all get along (relatively speaking) and have a Constitution that says we are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights, and a nation that will not perish from the earth.

Immigrants are known for their hard work, as they realized the much higher standard of living they enjoy here than back in their home nations, with governments that do not value them as much, and have policies which prevent the opportunities America grants.

And, our nation has always tried to prod those non-democracies to embrace our freedoms and vision for all its people, with mixed success.

Let's keep the famous president of the early 1960's in mind, though, as we elect our politicians:

"Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country"-JFK.

Hard work and being a team player fits into his vision for our nation.

And, keep in mind the warning of one founder:

"America will prosper if it can keep its republic, and not allow the monarchies which is fled from".

There is a myth that the Indian PR machine has put about. However, an Indian buys a gas station, a corner store or a restaurant, then pulishes a business card with President on it. Does this mean he is a successful businessman. I have lived and worked all over the world, these people in my experience rarely are up to the responsiblities they claim they can handle. They dont take risks, they look for administrative roles rather coalface jobs, they duck and dive from delivery responsiblity, they will not take responsiblity for budgets, deadlines or quality. Living in Europe, Australia, UAE, Canada etc. I have found them turning neighbourhoods into slums, using up health and welfare resources and posts I have read reveal that they rarely as a community make a net contribution. Even Scandanavia has reported a massive upturn in rape and other crimes attributable directly to the Indian population. Scum.

5:29 pm January 25, 2014

aye wrote:

James you have got to be the stupidest person i have ever encountered. Indians have the highest salary of any ethnic in america by a WIDE margin, even higher than whites. Its a good thing they're coming too because clearly people like you arent carrying the mental capacity of the country.

Add a Comment

Error message

Name

We welcome thoughtful comments from readers. Please comply with our guidelines. Our blogs do not require the use of your real name.

About India Real Time

India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.